When our daughter Victoria was about a year old we stumbled across the fun of flashlights. She was cranky one night and Daryl
turned out the lights and turned it on. She loved it, and we developed many games to play with it.

When she was still very young, we let her hold the flashlight and asked her to shine the light on different objects. Since she was just
learning words like window, door, and dresser, we used the flashlight to help us teach her the names for these items. She had a
ball pointing to things while learning. It took a little while for her to get the hang of using her hand to control a light across the
room, but once she did she was so proud of herself. It was an excellent tool for teaching her hand-eye coordination (much like using
a mouse to move an icon on the computer). We made sure it wasn't ever pointed directly into eyes.

As she got older we did other fun stuff with the flashlight. We did hand shadows, of course. We also experimented with putting
different objects in front of the light to see what patterns we could make (such as lace, a small lattice and tiny paper cutouts). The
flashlight helped her get over her fear of the dark. It's also just a simple way to entertain and calm a child at the end of the day.

Watching a light circling the ceiling can almost put me to sleep sometimes, and it works wonders on little ones. To add to the fun
you can have more flashlights so everybody has one. You can chase each other's lights, try to get the cat to "catch" it, and invent
games. You don't even need to wait for dark-- pull the blinds and make the room dim enough to show the light, and it may help calm
frazzled nerves in the meantime!